NEWS ITEM

News item is a factual text which inform reader or daily newspaper about events of the day which are regarder as newsworth or important.

The generic structure of News item :
* Headline.
* Correspondence.
* Newsworthy events :

Recounts the event in summary form.
* Background events :

Elaborate what happened, to whom, in what circumstances.
* Sources :

Comments by participants in, witness to and authorities expert on the event.
Linguistic features :
* Action verbs.
* Verbal verbs.
* Mental verbs.
* Temporal circumstances.
* Spatial circumstances.
* Specific participants.
 
Is structure is:
• Newsworthy Event(s): recounts the events in summary form
• Background Event(s): elaborate what happened, to WHOM, in WHAT circumstances.
• Sources: comments by participants in, witnesses to and authorities’ expert on the event.

 
Significant Grammar Features:

• Short, telegraphic information about story captured in headline
• Generally using Simple Past Tense
• Use of Material Processes to retell the event
• Using Action Verbs, e.g.: were, run, go, kill, etc.
• Using Saying Verbs, e.g.: say, tell
• Focus on Circumstances
• Use of projecting Verbal Processes in Sources stages

There are some rules that can help to make newspaper headlines more comprehensible.

1. The passive voice is used without the appropriate form of “be”.
2. It is unusual to find complex forms, generally the simple present form is used
3. The present progressive tense is used, usually to describe something that is changing or developing, but the auxiliary verb is usually left out.
4. To refer to the future, headlines often use the infinitive.
5. Headlines are not always complete sentences

Example of News item :

Shark Savages Creek Swimmer
By John Orr and AAP

A Gold Coast man was recovering in hospital last night after a shark bit him in his buttocks and right leg when he went for a moonlit swim in a canal.
Mr. Craig Coleman, 26 needed about 200 stitches and is awaiting plastic surgery.
He went for a swim in little Tallebudgera Creek and adjoining canals to “cool off” late on Saturday night.
He “dog-paddled” halfway accros the stream and while having a breather, a shark, estimated, to be 1.8m long, “took a liking to him”.
“I never got a look at him-who would have thought there would be sharks in the river,” Mr. Coleman said yesterday.
He was the second person to be attacked by a shark in the Mermaid Waters canal in the past 12 months.
A 10 years-old boy was attacked late last year only metres from where Mr. Coleman was bitten.
Mr. Coleman said he was unaware of previous shark attacks in Gold Coast waterways as he had recently moved there from Sydney.